


The Wraith

by perihadion



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Suicidal Thoughts, buckle up this one's gonna be rough
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:21:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23583031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perihadion/pseuds/perihadion
Summary: Din Djarin and those around him in a dark alternate timeline where the Child has been killed.
Relationships: Cara Dune & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), implied Cara Dune/The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian (TV)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 36





	The Wraith

**Author's Note:**

> I had been thinking about this since writing _[The Rip](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22974751/chapters/54922543)_ and this story is sort of an alternate take on that one with the premise that the Child died during the attack. Uh, sorry about writing the first #babyyodadeathfic. Please forgive me.
> 
>  **6th August 2020:** I was planning to continue this fic but to be honest Gina Carano's recent posts and tweets about #BlackLivesMatter have left such a sour taste in my mouth that I have no motivation or interest in writing about Cara any more. I can't separate the two, knowing that Cara was written specifically for Gina. I might end up reworking this to make it a Din solo piece but I won't be continuing it in this form.

Cara knew, as the dust started to clear, that she was too late. The Imperial remnants’ troops had dispersed, leaving behind them a broken silhouette. When she saw him she almost fell to her knees where she stood. She stumbled forward under a force that seemed external to her, and put her hand on his bare head.

Din looked up at her, his face twisted with some emotion she understood but could not name. The Child lay, lifeless, in his arms.

Cara fell to her knees then, and took Din in her arms. She wanted to say something to him but there was nothing to say. The world had broken apart. She had failed him.

* * *

They buried the Child together, swaddled in Din's cloak, deep in the earth where he would never be disturbed, with Din’s helmet for a headstone.

“I could never wear it again,” he said. She understood: caring for and protecting the Child was his sacred duty and he had failed. He had sinned beyond imagination, he had become forsaken, he was _dar’manda_.

Cara laid her hand on the earth where the Child rested and closed her eyes. She had never had any ideas about religion, but she found herself whispering something close to a prayer. Then she left Din to say his good-bye alone.

* * *

“What are you going to do?” Cara asked, once they were in hyper-space.

Din bowed his head. “I am no longer a Mandalorian,” he said, without turning to her: Cara understood. He had lived his whole life with his face guarded; the friction between his raw emotions and her perception was unbearable to him. He would not show her and she would not look. “Everything has been stripped from me.”

Cara closed her eyes. For all that she had lost, for all that they had lost, to lose this Child —

“He was my redemption,” Din said. She looked at him: his profile was illuminated by the star trails lighting up the viewport. She understood what he meant. Like Din she had spent years spiralling aimlessly through the galaxy. During the war she had felt like her life, her actions, had some purpose — that they were fighting for something that mattered, for a better future. When the war ended it had become clear that the future she had fought for was almost indistinguishable from the past. But when she had met Din, met someone with a purpose, something of that old conviction had reawakened in her.

Din had lived his life in service to his Tribe and then for the sake of his Child. First one and then the other had been taken from him — and with them his culture and religion. She knew what the Mandalorians believed. She knew that what had befallen him was a fate worse than death: he was emptied-out, a soulless vessel.

“I am nothing now,” Din said.

“Din —” she objected but he cut her off.

“No,” he said, standing now to look at her. “Every single thing I was has been destroyed.” He looked at the signet on his pauldron. “I shouldn’t even be wearing the beskar,” he said. “But I will need it for what I am going to do next.”

“What is that?” Cara asked again.

Din sat back down in the pilot’s seat. “I’ll take you back to Nevarro,” he said.

“Din,” she said, striding over and grabbing the seat to turn him to face her. “I’m coming with you.”

He grabbed her wrist, gripping it so tight the pain shot up her arm, but she just held his gaze, refusing to let him see her flinch. “It’s a suicide mission,” he said. “I am going after the Imps, all of them, as many of the motherfuckers as I can take out.”

She wrenched herself free of his grasp. “Then let me join you.” She was shaking under the pressure of what she had to say, clenching and unclenching her fists. “I should have been there,” she said. “I know that he was your son and not mine, but I failed too. And you can’t ask me to live with that if you won’t.”

Din turned away from her so that she couldn’t see his face. “You can’t ask me to get your blood on my hands too,” he said, his voice breaking.

“I thought it didn’t matter now,” she said, unable to keep the emotion from her own voice. “I thought you were already nothing.”

She closed her eyes, unable to find the words to convince him.

“It —” she started, and then swallowed. “I can’t accept that this is it,” she said. “And I don’t want to live without —” she couldn’t say it. “And I know I can’t change your mind,” she said, “so don’t try to change mine.”

Din said nothing for a long time, and grief seemed to settle over them so that even the air inside the cabin felt too thick to breathe. Cara felt that she herself was already dying, and that it was her right to take as many Storm Troopers with her as she could.

Eventually Din took a deep, shuddering breath that sounded like the rattling of bones, and said, “Okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [twitter](http://twitter.com/theoceanblooms) or [tumblr](http://spectroscopes.tumblr.com)! If you really liked ("liked") this fic, it would be lovely if you could [reblog](https://www.tumblr.com/reblog/615049662369579008/ynZPmpAR) on tumblr.


End file.
